Friday, March 08, 2002

Fadime Sahindal - Honor killing & culture clash in Sweden

For four years Fadime Sahindal's father had threatened to kill her. But last week she took a risk and went to say goodbye to her mother and her sisters before leaving to study in Africa.

Just before 10pm, as they sat in her sister's flat in the Swedish city of Uppsala, the doorbell rang. Her father burst in and shot Fadime in the head. She died in her mother's arms.

Sahindal, 26, paid the ultimate price for falling in love with the wrong man and defying the patriarchal values of her culture. Her father was an illiterate Kurdish farmer who moved to Sweden in 1980. His family arrived four years later, when Fadime was seven. [....]

In court he called Fadime "the whore" and then confessed to having killed her. He said that he had to protect the family's honour.

The story has stirred deep emotions in Sweden. The government has promised about $170,000 to help girls in the same position. The legal age of marriage for foreigners will be raised from 15 to 18, on par with the age for Swedes.

Six groups representing foreigners in Sweden want to turn Sahindal's funeral into a demonstration against patriarchal cultures that allow "honour" killings.[....]

=> In addition to the two articles below, there is a good collection of links and other information, in several languages, on a Kurdish website in Sweden HERE.)

BOTKYRKA, Sweden — When Fadime Sahindal told police her life had been threatened, they gave her an alarm system. When she approached politicians for help, they told her to make peace with her parents.

And when she appealed in television interviews for aid in escaping a death sentence imposed by her father after she refused an arranged marriage, she provoked sympathy among Swedes — whose more liberal outlook she shared — but little willingness to get involved in a family matter.

Now that she's dead, shot in the head by her father, the 26-year-old victim of an "honor killing" is drawing attention to the cultural double standards she battled.

Details of the killing were released from police records after her father, Rahmi, was charged yesterday with her murder.

She was shot by her father as she left the apartment where she had secretly visited her mother and sisters in the quiet university town of Uppsala, 40 miles north of Stockholm, court officials said.

Rahmi, who said he acted to save his family's honor, has pleaded guilty to murder.

Fadime had fled her family home because her father and other male relatives did not want her to mix with Swedes and were trying to arrange a marriage for her in Turkey. Her father threatened her when she dated a young Swede, prompting her to go into hiding.

Fadime, who had spoken in Parliament and on TV about difficulties faced by young women from immigrant families, was gunned down in front of her mother and two younger sisters.

The Sahindal family moved to Sweden from a rural village in Turkey more than 20 years ago.

Sahindal has become a martyr among women who came to this liberal country from patriarchal cultures.

No comprehensive statistics exist to show the extent of such honor killings here and elsewhere in Scandinavia, where whole communities of Kurds and other Muslim groups have found refuge.

Sahindal's death has exposed the region's failure to integrate immigrants into these societies. Having long looked the other way when religious and cultural clashes came to public attention, Swedes are pondering what more they could and should have done.

"The system isn't working," said Dilsa Demirbag-Sten, a former government adviser on integration affairs, who accuses authorities of acting as if certain rights and freedoms accorded Nordic residents, such as gender equality and protection from forced marriage, are not necessarily applicable to immigrants.

Immigrants have been coming to Sweden in increasing numbers in the past decade to fill a persistent labor shortage. They also take advantage of the country's liberal asylum policy.

But institutional flaws — such as the two years on average it takes to get a decision on asylum requests — encourage those waiting for permanent refuge to band together in bleak housing projects in what amounts to self-imposed segregation.

At least 15 percent of Sweden's 9 million residents are non-Nordic and heavily concentrated in volatile ghettos of Somalis, Kurds, Bosnians and dozens of other groups.

"There are places just outside of Stockholm where the entire population is foreign. These people aren't living in Sweden at all," said Keya Izol, head of the Federation of Kurdish Associations in Sweden, referring to towns and suburbs such as Botkyrka, a 30-minute drive from Stockholm.

A 1995 reform of laws on refugees and immigration has worsened the situation, Izol said, by focusing training and jobs on the younger generation, causing strains within families as well as between immigrants and Swedes.

"We have been too slow to integrate the older generation and too fast in integrating the younger ones," former Danish Justice Minister Erling Olsen said.

Nalin Pekgul, a Social Democratic legislator of Kurdish origin in Sweden, shares the revulsion over Sahindal's killing but cautions against interpreting an act of criminal extremism as typical of fundamentalist immigrants.

"Sweden has done a better job than most countries with integration, which is why this case has caused such strong reaction," Pekgul said.

As a figure of respect in Sweden's 40,000-strong Kurdish community, Pekgul tried to intervene on Sahindal's behalf. The young woman had given interviews to Swedish media about the death threats from her father and brother, Masud, a level of defiance that Pekgul feared was only enhancing the danger.

The lawmaker negotiated a compromise in 1998 by which Sahindal agreed to stay away from Uppsala and her father promised not to stalk her outside their hometown while she was living in seclusion near Stockholm.

In recent years, Sahindal had been pursuing a sociology degree and become an outspoken advocate of the opportunities Nordic immigration presented for women from fundamentalist backgrounds.

Information from Seattle Times news services is included in this report.

For four years Fadime Sahindal's father had threatened to kill her. But last week she took a risk and went to say goodbye to her mother and her sisters before leaving to study in Africa.

Just before 10pm, as they sat in her sister's flat in the Swedish city of Uppsala, the doorbell rang. Her father burst in and shot Fadime in the head. She died in her mother's arms.

Sahindal, 26, paid the ultimate price for falling in love with the wrong man and defying the patriarchal values of her culture. Her father was an illiterate Kurdish farmer who moved to Sweden in 1980. His family arrived four years later, when Fadime was seven.

Her parents discouraged her from speaking to Swedish children at school. Instead, she was told the important thing was eventually to return to Turkey and get married. She grew up under the control of her father and younger brother, who physically abused her.

During a computer course in 1996 she met and fell in love with a Swedish boy called Patrik Lindesjö. Sahindal was under no illusion about her father's reaction. She knew that he would think she was dishonouring the family. They kept their relationship secret for a year. When her father eventually found out, his first reaction was to beat them both up.

Her father disowned her, but the couple refused to be intimidated. Lindesjö parents went to Fadime's family to propose on his behalf, but were turned down. Sahindal moved to another town, only to be pursued and threatened by her brother. The police simply advised her to stop talking to her family.

Instead she turned to the press, giving interviews about the conditions faced by Kurdish girls in Sweden. Single-handedly she started a debate about integration and double standards. The police's inaction in the face of her father's threats infuriated the public.

On a visit to Uppsala her father spotted her with Lindesjö. He attacked her, spat in her face and screamed: "Bloody whore. I will beat you to pieces."

She told police: "He said I was rejected from the family and was not allowed to come back to Uppsala. If I did I would never leave the city alive." Her father was charged, and in 1998 was convicted of making unlawful threats. Her brother, who had cursed her as a whore during the trial, was also found guilty.

It was a bittersweet victory for Sahindal, who had stood up for her beliefs but lost her family. She often said that she loved her father, and that he understood no better way of treating her.

Then, in June 1998, as the couple prepared to move into a flat together, Lindesjö was killed when his car crashed into a concrete pillar. A police investigation, which found nothing suspicious, has now reopened.

Fadime carried on, and last November spoke to the Swedish parliament about her struggle for freedom. Then, last week, her father caught up with her. He was arrested a couple of hours later. In court he called Fadime "the whore" and then confessed to having killed her. He said that he had to protect the family's honour.

The story has stirred deep emotions in Sweden. The government has promised about $170,000 to help girls in the same position. The legal age of marriage for foreigners will be raised from 15 to 18, on par with the age for Swedes.

Six groups representing foreigners in Sweden want to turn Sahindal's funeral into a demonstration against patriarchal cultures that allow "honour" killings.

Sahindal, who had said that she did not want a funeral according to the rites of her native religion, may be laid to rest beside Lindesjö at Uppsala's Protestant cathedral.

About Me

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who has been teaching most recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the New School for Social Research, He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2015-2016 and a Research Associate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College.
(Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.)